Belichick and the Patriots: A love story

What is it that distinguishes Bill Belichick from the rest of the guys in the league, guys who work as hard and as long as he does and have their own special approach?

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By JONATHAN COMEY

southcoasttoday.com

By JONATHAN COMEY

Posted Feb. 3, 2012 at 12:01 AM
Updated Feb 3, 2012 at 1:48 PM

By JONATHAN COMEY

Posted Feb. 3, 2012 at 12:01 AM
Updated Feb 3, 2012 at 1:48 PM

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The question was asked many different ways, on many different days, and the answers were as uniform as the man himself surely would have wanted it.

The question: What makes Bill Belichick a great head coach?

Everybody, save a few diehard haters, admits it freely, and there's really not a whole lot of debate left about it. You can cite enough numbers to clog a calculator, each more impressive than the last. Eleven straight finishes atop the AFC East (two ties). Eight trips to the Super Bowl as an assistant or head coach. Not a single defense in the bottom 10 allowing points in any of his 26 years as a head coach or top assistant, with 18 in the top 10. A 17-6 record in the playoffs, a 175-97 record in the regular season.

But it still doesn't answer the question: Why? How? What is it that distinguishes him from the rest of the guys in the league, guys who work as hard and as long as he does and have their own special approach?

When I went to the Patriots locker room last week to ask the question myself, a funny word kept creeping into the answers.

Love.

Special teams ace Matthew Slater: "I think what you see is what you get. With coach, you love playing for him — he's very demanding, but you know what to expect from him. There's no smoke and mirrors. He is what he is, and as a professional, that's all you can ask for."

Safety Patrick Chung: "I think guys love playing for a coach where it's going to be tough, but you know your role, you know what to expect, and if you don't do it right they're going to get someone else that can do it."

Fullback Lousaka Polite: "He's consistent, he's the same for every player, and he demands a lot of his players — and that's a good thing. That's how it should be. I love it, I love how things are done here."

Rookie QB Ryan Mallett: "It's his interaction with the players — he gets what he wants done, makes it real clear. It's how I was hoping it would be, I love coaches like that."

It's always seemed to be a contradiction; how could a coach perceived to be suffering from Acute Lack of Personality Disorder (ALPD), get such good results? He's never been considered a coach who motivates with fear, like Bill Parcells, or with passion, like Bill Cowher, and yet surely just being a chalkboard champion doesn't explain it either.

The repetition of the word love was interesting, because it wasn't really directed at Belichick; while Chung did break into a smile and say, "He's a good dude, he's definitely a good dude," none of the quotes were about the man himself — they were about what the man represented.

Stability. Consistency. Dedication. Excellence.

Perhaps what Belichick is able to do is remind the players how much they love the game, how much they love to win, how important it is above and beyond the money and glory and status that comes with playing football at the highest level.

As the players continued to be asked about their coach this week, the picture became clearer. The veterans, ones who've been with him year in and year out, seem to take on the character of their coach.

Jerod Mayo, on whether Belichick had said anything inspirational: "Not too much, to be honest with you. If you're not ready for the Super Bowl, you won't be ready for any game."

Logan Mankins: "When it's work time, it's work time but there is a little bit of time for joking around and he's more than willing to joke around. When it's time to get down to business, he's time for business. That's what we want from him — he's our leader. We know when it's time for business that he's going to show us it's time for business. That's the great thing about Bill (Belichick) you always know what you're going to get from Bill (Belichick). You don't have to show up to work wondering what Bill (Belichick) is going to be like — you know."

Wes Welker, on whether Belichick is as serious as he appears: "It's pretty much the same with us. He is kind of like our boss in a way, so we listen to him, follow his lead and do the best we can out there."

No starry-eyed tributes there.

Then you have a guy like Mark Anderson, a player whose story would be unique had it not been told before in different ways on other Belichick teams. Picked up off the scrap heap, assigned a specific duty (rush the passer), given the opportunity to succeed and doing so beyond anyone's highest expectations. Belichick has always had the touch with these players, bringing out the best in them when others had failed.

"To me, he's a great coach," Anderson said this week. "He's a motivator, but you respect him so much you don't want to let him down. You know how much hard work he put into it, and you just don't want to let him down. You want to go out, do your job and you want to make sure you do everything you can to prepare just as well as he did. You just kind of want to match his intensity."

Belichick is bringing a Patriots team to the Super Bowl that started 19 different players who were never drafted by the NFL. A team that somehow managed to allow the third-most yards in regular-season history. A team with almost nothing in common with the 2001 team that shocked the world, or the 2003 and 2004 teams that set a new bar for performance in the clutch.

He's won with teams that could pass, and teams that could run, and teams that could get to the passer and teams that could tackle anything that moved. He's won with the Giants, and the Jets, and the Browns, and the Patriots, and he's placed so many assistants in high-profile jobs elsewhere that just being around him makes careers happen.

His success has built on itself, snowballing, and maybe it's the fact that he never seems to take that success for granted that it continues.

He'll go down as one of the all-time greats, and if no one can quite figure out what that one thing was that he possessed to make it happen, that's probably OK with him.

"I think Bill focuses a lot on the little things," Vince Wilfork said this week. "He'll sit in his office for hours and hours and hours and come out with one thing, and you'll look at him like, 'Are you serious? This is what we're doing?' But he always comes back to it. I don't know what he does; it always comes down to that little thing that he gives us. I learned that as a rookie, just listen because this guy's been around for a long, long time. Just listen and trust what he does. I've been doing it for eight years, so he hasn't failed me yet.

"So, I'm going to continue to listen, and whatever he brings to the table, I'm sure he put a lot of thought into it, and I think it's going to carry us a long way if we keep trusting in him because he keeps delivering."